Campfires, Rest Rooms, and Thermostats

Did you ever wonder why campers sit around a fire when it’s 95 degrees out! What’s up with that?

Do campers get cold easier than everyone else? And what are they staring at in that fire. You’ll see a whole group of them just staring at that fire, talking low, as if there is a silence rule like in the library or the “guy’s” public restrooms.

Women usually don’t know about the “good ol’ boy” rule that it is a forbidden to even say “hi” in a men’s restroom, even at a campground. And eye contact is definitely forbidden. Women all seem to talk in their restrooms, heck, some of them have sofas and coffee tables in theirs. What’s up with that? Women don’t read in their restrooms, because they can talk. Guys have to maintain a silence that would challenge even one of those silent monks! (At least they can make eye contact.) So guys have taken to reading while they are using the “rest” part of restroom. In fact we have been conditioned so that some can’t “rest” at all without something, anything to read! Women, on the other hand, talk a lot in there, in fact, that is why they go in groups, they want to talk! So they are totally ignorant of our guy rules, and we don’t need to tell them either, cause then they will have just one more topic to talk about in their’s. All you have to do is glance over at even the biggest guy and he will run, not walk, out of there! Without even pretending to wash his hands! Unless there is excessive alcohol involved, in which case comments like “Oh my God!” and “Not again!” are ignored due to circumstances. Women and men, whether camping or not, just don’t have the same rules!

You’ll notice that women rarely sit around a campfire until the coals go out, unless there are no guys around and a bunch of them just returned to the campground from a visit to Chippendales. And then they usually are only there because they fell asleep. See, different rules!

And why is there always the one guy who has to constantly poke at the fire and cause sparks and hot coals to get all over everyone. What does he think he is doing? And there’s always the guy who brings wet or new wood for his fire. Soon his wife is screaming at him to get the fire going, because the kids are starving and he’s blowing and fanning to no avail. Next he starts pouring charcoal fluid on it and the smoke starts belching out and it covers the whole campground, his family is choking, and the other campers are looking on wondering what the heck he is doing? Shouldn’t there be a license to operate a fire? When you take your drivers test you should also have to take a fire building test.

No matter where you go didja’ ever notice in every campground there is always at least one “professional fire builder.” You know, the guy with the giant pickup truck bed overflowing with enough wood to cook a stampede of cattle? All he does is drop a match into the fire pit and he has the perfect fire going?

I really don’t think that campers get cold easier than anybody else. Just look at the dreaded factory supplied RV thermostat. It is a precision instrument designed to alternately freeze you and fry you, winter or summer, unless you installed that handy dandy digital replacement gizmo that keeps it more stable. I installed one but it only solved my problem halfway. See, it does read the exact temperature, and in winter, my significant harassment says that it is way too hot at 72 degrees and turns it down! Now that it is summer, she says it is is too cold at 73 degrees and resets it to 78 degrees. What’s up with that? I actually miss my old “freeze then fry” thermostat, at least I was warm part of the time in winter, and cool part of the time in summer.